Tom Miller stopped at 145 W Verdugo Avenue in Burbank, to fuel up a prototype hydrogen vehicle that he is test driving.
John McCoy — Staff photographer, File

Southern California residents idling on the 405 Freeway can ease their carbon guilt with the knowledge that the road to zero-emission transportation is being paved in their own backyard.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology, which Honda and Toyota have been testing in the South Bay for more than a decade, is poised to become the next big thing in alternative energy, as state agencies and automakers work to get 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025.

Hyundai last month began leasing a fuel cell SUV to customers in the South Bay and Orange County. Toyota and Honda will start selling fuel cell electric vehicles to the masses next year.

The carmakers are pushing the technology in California because of the high number of early adopters of alternative fuels.

The problem is that consumers don’t want to buy a car that is inconvenient to refuel, and carmakers don’t want to invest heavily in stations until they know people are willing to make the jump to electric.

To help manufacturers get past this chicken-or-the-egg situation, California is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to prime the infrastructure pump.

“In order to get consumers to buy hydrogen vehicles, they need to know that the fueling infrastructure to support them will be there,” said Teresa Schilling of the California Energy Commission, which is spending $100 million annually on alternative fuel and vehicle technologies.

The goal is to build enough hydrogen fueling and electric charging stations to accommodate 1 million zero-emission vehicles by 2020.

Fifty-four stations is less than the goal of 68 set by the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a public-private entity tasked with getting the technology off the ground, and less than the 100 stations that manufacturers plan to build as demand picks up.

“If we get to a hundred stations, guess what? We’ve basically crossed the ‘valley of death,’ ” said Steve Ellis, manager of fuel cell marketing at American Honda Motor Co. in Torrance.

“Fuel cells produce energy by mixing pure hydrogen with oxygen from the air. The chemical reaction produces water vapor and energy, which is used to power the car’s electric motor.

Hydrogen atoms in the atmosphere tend to bond with other elements, which means it requires energy to produce and store pure H2.”

Most stored hydrogen is produced by heating natural gas and mixing it with steam, but there are also more sustainable ways of producing hydrogen. California law mandates that a third of all hydrogen production eventually come from renewable energies such as wind, solar and recycled methane captured at land fills.

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Depending on the method of production, hydrogen in fuel cells has a carbon footprint that is 40 percent to 90 percent smaller than gasoline, according to Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Research Center at UC Irvine.

Fuel cell technology has been pooh-poohed for years as prohibitively expensive, but advances in the past decade have brought costs down considerably, Ellis said. Costs will continue to fall if consumers embrace the technology and enable economies of scale.

Honda has not said how much its fuel cell vehicle will cost when it comes out next year. Toyota’s fuel cell vehicle, which it unveiled in January, is priced at $70,000 when it goes on sale in Japan in April.

An entry-level Tesla Model S costs $70,000. And whether people are willing to spend that much on what looks like a futuristic Prius — instead of Tesla’s award-winning luxury sedan — will depend on the customer’s driving needs.

Most plug-in electrics have ranges of about 75 miles and take eight hours to charge. The Model S has a range of 250 to 300 miles and takes about an hour to rejuice at one of Tesla’s Supercharger stations, which the company has strategically placed across the country.

The advantages of hydrogen fuel is that it provides a range of 300 miles per tank and takes about five minutes to refuel.

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk has dismissed hydrogen fuel cells as more of a marketing ploy than a long-term solution. But Musk’s criticisms could also be viewed as a marketing ploy for Tesla, since fuel cell technology could threaten Tesla’s dominance in the electric vehicle market.

Musk plans to build a multibillion-dollar “gigafactory” within the next three years that would more than double the world’s total lithium-ion battery production. The success of that investment relies on the growing popularity of battery-electric vehicles, not fuel cells.

Sixty-nine percent of carmakers believe fuel cell technology will be an “extremely important” or “very important” trend over the next decade, according to KPMG’s Global Automotive Executive Survey 2014. The same report predicts fuel cell vehicles will account for 24 percent of consumer demand for electric vehicles by 2019, with battery electrics taking 31 percent and hybrids still dominating with 35 percent of the electric drive market.

Still, automakers are “nervous” about the time it will take to build up the fuel cell infrastructure, said Bruce Belzowski, automotive analyst at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute.

In interviews with more than a dozen auto industry analysts and fuel cell experts, a consensus emerged that there is room for both battery electric and fuel cell electric cars, at least for the time being.

“It would be unwise to take a position and put all the eggs in a single basket,” Honda’s Ellis said.

But history suggests one paradigm will likely win out in the long run. The first automobiles, built in the late 1800s, were mostly powered by batteries or steam. Gasoline didn’t become the dominant fuel until a 1901 oil boom flooded the market with cheap petroleum and Henry Ford developed a lighter, more affordable combustion engine. Within five to 10 years, combustion took over.

“This time around it’s going to be much more gradual,” said John Heitmann, professor of automotive history at Ohio’s University of Dayton and author of “The Automobile and American Life.” “There is still a lot of petroleum out there and there is still a lot of investment in internal combustion.”

Public acceptance of an unproven technology is another issue for fuel cell manufacturers. The Prius may be the most popular car in California today, but that success came only after years of trial and error and poor sales in the early 2000s.

Fuel cells may enjoy a warmer welcome than their hybrid cousins initially received, as rising gas prices and melting ice caps have made fuel-efficient vehicles more attractive to consumers. But educating drivers about new technology can be nearly as onerous as creating electricity out of thin air.

“Our car runs on a fuel that no one understands. ... It’s a big hurdle,” said Craig Scott, national manager of advanced technologies at Toyota Motor Sales, USA.

Toyota typically starts promoting new models six months before they go to market, Scott said. The company’s marketing of fuel cells, however, started a year ago, or about two years before Toyota’s hydrogen car is expected in U.S. showrooms.

Jon Spallino has been driving a fuel cell vehicle in the South Bay for 10 years. He is one of about 90 drivers in the area that Honda has allowed to lease its hydrogen prototypes as the company refines the technology.

Spallino had no complaints about the cars, which he used when he was commuting to work in Orange County.

“As long as you’re able to access another car if you want to drive to San Francisco or Las Vegas or something, I would highly recommend it,” Spallino said. “That’s why I’m still in it.”